With the Bears Up Next, No Rest Area Awaits Fox

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 9 - John Fox turned red in the face when he walked into his Monday news conference at Bank of America Stadium and saw the back-page headline in front of him. "Outfoxed!" said The New York Post, which had been placed on the table where Fox customarily sits.

Fox, coach of the Carolina Panthers, picked up the newspaper, folded it and set it on the floor. "It's amazing what you see in print," he said with understated humor.

It was a lighter moment for a coach who showed his serious side when it counted, preparing the Panthers for what turned out to be a dominating 23-0 victory over the Giants in the first round of the playoffs on Sunday.

That victory, on the road, moved Carolina into a National Football Conference semifinal game against the Bears in Chicago.

The Bears beat the Panthers, 13-3, during the regular season, and attention will quickly shift to Sunday's rematch. But on Monday, Fox tolerated some teasing in a playoff grind that will last at least one more week.

"So, you're not the second coming of Vince Lombardi?" he was asked by a reporter who had taken note of a column in USA Today that suggested the Giants had made a big mistake by allowing Fox, their defensive coordinator from 1997-2001, to leave to coach the Panthers. The columnist, Ian O'Connor, wondered if it was not an even bigger mistake than when the Giants let Lombardi leave in the late 1950's for Green Bay, where he went on to build a dynasty.

Bigger than Lombardi? Fox did not think so. After all, he noted, he was the same coach who managed to lose a home game to Dallas on Dec. 24, when a victory would have clinched the N.F.C. South title.

" 'Idiot' was probably more the word you saw," Fox said, referring to his coaching against the Cowboys.

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Still, on Monday, Fox was willing to accept it as a compliment that Giants running back Tiki Barber had lamented that his team had been outcoached by the Panthers. Barber was held to 41 yards rushing, and the Panthers' defense forced Eli Manning to throw three interceptions and to fumble once.

"I think, really, the reality is, our team played better than their team on that day," Fox said of Barber's comment. "I think some of it is frustration in Tiki's case. Some of it was maybe trying to be kind. Either way, I think, whenever you lose, you're frustrated. We've been there our share of times."

Asked if he had a hunch that Manning could be rattled, Fox said: "All quarterbacks can be rattled. It's just a matter of if you can execute it. There's not a quarterback out there that likes and enjoys pressure. You either do it with the rush or you do it with the coverage, and somehow you've got to make the quarterback hesitate."

Fox will no doubt try to accomplish the same thing this week by preparing the Panthers to face another young quarterback in Chicago's Rex Grossman.

But Fox said it was too early to know how his team would manage that, or how it would avoid being dominated by the Chicago defense, which sacked Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme eight times and intercepted two of his passes in a Nov. 20 victory that snapped Carolina's six-game winning streak.

Fox still has a few days to figure it all out. Asked at the end of his news conference if genius was spelled with a capital G, Fox laughed once more.